Foibles

Growing up I was the usual, including being admonished for being messy. I've carried that yoke all my life - through single-dom, through marriage, through being a divorcée, back to being married. The yoke hasn't been any easier to carry as I get older. I've just learned to carry the criticism with more grace or absorb it with less visible emotions.

By far, I would say, keeping house as a married woman is the most difficult. There is a strong point of view of many people that the house should be spic and span no matter that the wife/mother/woman-of-the-house may have put in an eight hour day at a paying job, plus the commute, plus the seven hours of parenting (home work, face washing, teeth brushing, and playing with the children). (I just finished The Nanny Diaries. Apparently not all of us have these problems.)

Getting CU-2 to do the math, you have 10 hours left in the day. (I know. I know. CU's back to school tomorrow.)

While I wish, some days, that I had the extra hour, I'm looking at 9 hours. Many doctors report that people should get on average 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night to feel good, be more productive, and avoid getting sick.

So, here's the coin toss. Walk through the house and tidy the kitchen (putting away the clean dishes from the time saving washing machine, and reloading the dishes, putting out the garbage, picking up the remainders of toys, and school supplies left by the walking CUs, and generally trying to put things in their place (or find a new place for things that come into the house), followed by the living room (straightening, sweeping, picking up), followed by choosing to put the stuff on the stairs (that is perpetually ignored) or running it up to the CU's bedrooms. Well, I could do that for a two hours, or sleep. If I don't do it, the mess piles up on itself. If I do do it, I cut into valuable sleep time, and that's if I can sleep. (My own personal anxieties come into play here.)

Any one reading this would know this routine all too well.

So, what triggered the latest bout of public remorse? Correspondence with our contractor. Apparently the slow down on the project is directly related to the state of our home during construction. (It doesn't seem to matter that 1. they saw what they were getting into, 2. they were told to talk to us if they had any problems accessing places, they were to say something. They didn't. That they also left the detailed work on every room for weeks, which left us with stacks and stacks of unsorted piles seems to be par for the course.)

Anyway, I'm feeling public admonishment and it's bring a wave of sadness. Getting emails from the contractor are about as much fun as getting them from dear XDH.

I'm just not feeling competent today.

And then shit happens

Last night I went to bed obsessing about the state of the house. This morning I woke up obsessing about the state of the house. For any one who knows the site, we've been going through some rough times with delays on getting work done. Well, they got rougher.

I dared CC the owner of the company organizing the labor working on the site requesting removal of garbage left on the site for the last month, and for a time line of when the work would be completed. In reply, I received a tersely worded email from the owner.

There was much hearsay used in the letter, seeing that he hadn't set foot on the site since signing the contract last fall. There clearly was a lot of butt covering from the minions about what was and wasn't being done.

From a consumer's point of view, I stand by the emails I've sent to the project managers, including requests for updates, and budget. I asked for better communication so as to set expectations for me, and my family. I asked for this repeatedly.

The response from this owner was, well, disappointing. Opportunity lost to do some good PR. On the scale, it was an interesting letter, worthy of XDH in many respects.

Dora scares the bejezzers out of me

Dora, of Explorer fame scares the bejezzers out of me.

It really all started almost two years ago when DH and I went on a road trip with CU-3, the parental units to the States. We stopped in at a Walgreens, or some such drugstore where they sell oh so much more. I saw DH sneaking around and then out the door with a package that he refused to share the contents of. Thinking romantic thoughts, I thought he'd bought ME something nice.

Out in the parking lot, with CU-3 firmly ensconced in the car seat, he shows me a disembodied head of Dora (the rest remaining in the bag). He thought it would be cute as CU-3 so much liked Dora. I berated him telling him it was a large doll (larger then CU-3), then about the price, then about the fear factor. This was no Chucky doll to be sure, but it would eventually be used to strike fear into the unsuspecting.

Since Dora moved in, she's been used to pad out the bed (to make it look like some one was in bed, but really wasn't), pop-up in unusual places, and basically lie around to be found by a passer-by. The immediate reaction to some of these "surprises" is, seeing that CU-3's body attributes are some what like Dora, that she's been hurt or worse ...

Thus, this post. I found Dora hanging out at the bottom of the stairs. Yikes! followed by panic.

Dora, you've got to go.

It's Tuesday

And yesterday marked a banner day for me. I read a book. Actually, I finished a book that I borrowed from the library no more then three times. I can thank/blame my former neighbor for the idea of completing the book. She said that the first thing she wanted to do was to start reading again (putting the house up for sale and moving lock, stock and barrel was a grueling task).

The book title I finished? Mommies who Drink. Apropo I would say.

This, that, and the other thing

Never has so much of so little occurred in such an expanse of time.

Firstly, I'm feeling under-motivated not having connected with Perpetual Chocoholic this month. I mean I'm really suffering from withdrawal here.

Secondly, having just completed three weeks of vacation with all four CUs, I'm glad for the return to the regular schedule. CU-1 has been moving into pre-teenness with great relish and is driving me around the bend and then taking a left-turn at Alberquere. But that's his job.

Here on the home front, things have been moving ever so slowly. When we got back, the contractors still hadn't finished the job they set out to do oh way so back in January. That was a disappointment. DH and I set aside our feelings and pressed on with other immediate tasks.

Shelves went up, closet organizers organized closets, garbage (more then our city restricted three bags) went to the curb. The house is starting to look sharp. Now, it's those last ten pounds that have to be addressed. CU-4's baptism and open house Saturday is the train light at the end of the tunnel. Whoo whoo! Can you hear it coming? DH's recent bout of fluishness didn't help with the progress, though he was pretty good attending to the babes. And my burning the midnight oil has helped lots, though, when I have to wake for the four o'clock feed and do a side tangent to the bathroom only to come back to DH scowling at me as he thinks I abandoned the baby to howling makes for a cranky maman (and, regrettably children's programming only runs in 30 minute increments so just as I'm getting a really good nap in, I'm awakened with the programming announcements of CU-3).

Gotta run, my howler monkey is going off again. CU-4 doesn't like it when I'm out of site for more then his memory can keep.

Best wishes

Happy birthday Mothership!

Keep on trucking!

What can I say

It's a wild day here at the ranch. The baby CU-s are fighting over toys, the pre-teen CU-s are provoking the babies with the toys, there's a carpenter destroying the newly built bathroom because it was put in sub-par, our neighbors officially move out today, it's Wednesday so it's cleaning day. And to add insult to injury, Perpetual Chocoholic rode by and I missed her! Wah wah wah.

The va-ca-tion (how I was taught how to spell vacation) was EX-CE-LLENT! I actually only thought of the fur that was flying at the home site a couple of times. Double-excellent for me. Mind you I came back to havoc and chaos of stuff that is still not done, or is done so poorly that it's deemed unacceptable (for example, a sewer stack is duct-taped off ...).

I've got try and figure out what to do today. Library, stationary store, visit to the Guide house? All of those things need to be done, as well as care and feeding of the birds, cats, hamster and kids. I'm pretty glad that I'm not working right now, though I'll get to do this all over again next year too!

We're back

Catching up on stuff. (Yard werk primarily - more on that in another post). Meanwhile, worth viewing: PostSecret Mini-film.